It is well known that in a silver halide color light-sensitive material, an aromatic primary amine color developing agent oxidized with exposed silver halide used as an oxidizing agent is reacted with a coupler to form an indophenol, indoaniline, indamine, azomethine, phenoxazine, and phenazine dyes, and the dyes related thereto, whereby a dye image is formed. In such a photographic system, a subtractive color process is used, and generally the dye image is formed with yellow, magenta and cyan dyes.
A phenol or naphthol coupler is generally used for forming a cyan dye image. However, these couplers have a large problem that since they have an unfavorable absorption in a green light region, they markedly deteriorate a color reproducibility, and therefore the solution therefor is desired.
The heterocyclic compounds described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,728,598 and 4,873,183, and European Patent 0249453A2 are proposed as the means for solving this problem. However, these couplers have a fatal problem that they have the low coupling activities. There are proposed as the couplers which overcome these problems, pyrazoloazoles described in European Patent Publications 0488248A1 and 0484909A1, and JP-A-5-232649 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an unexamined published Japanese patent application). These couplers are excellent in terms a coupling activity and a hue. However, the dyes formed from pyrazoloazoles shown in these patents have the problem that a color developing density changes due to change of a composition of a bleach-fixing solution (hereinafter referred to as a blix solution). It is the phenomenon which notably appeared particularly when the concentrations of a thiosulfuric acid ion or a sulfurous acid ion contained in the blix solution is changed by a continuous processing. Further, also in terms of a fastness of a dye image after processing, the fastness at a relatively low color-developing density area is inferior to that at a high color developing density area, and the improvement thereof has been desired. Furthermore, there has been involved the problem that cyan color fog at a non-developed area is large, and the improvement thereof has been desired.